Rating: 
Summary: A soul stirring memoir
Review: I heard Mrs. Holman speak recently at a mental health conference.
Her story and her book felt like they spoke directly to me. The real miracle is not that Holman survived her childhood. A lot of us have difficult ones (though her family's situation was truly bizarre). The miracle is that she has transformed the loss of her mother in to a book that shows people the ravages of untreated mental illness to its sufferers and their families. Mrs. Holman has won a fellowship from the Rosalynn Carter Mental Health Center and the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill, displays her commitment to advocacy and change.
This is not some poor-me tell all book. It is a work of art that is promoting change in people's perceptions of mental illness. I know of few other works that do both. Kay Jamison's
work. Holman is writing for the greater good. This is a book not to be missed if you want to understand what it's like to love someone with a mental disease.
Rating: 
Summary: Growing up with Schizophrenic Mother
Review: I picked up this book because of it's title. I remember the Patty Hearst saga very well, and also remember the feel of what the subtitle refers to as "a decade gone mad". For people recently graduated from America's colleges, the early 1970's were unsettling years. 60's idealism had already revealed it's disappointing underside, and the country was full of restless anxiety, with Vietnam winding towards its grim anti-climax and the Watergate affair generating so much empty passion among our political factions. The Patty Hearst story fascinated us because it seemed to capture the zeitgeist: scary, surrealistic, pointless - essentially a sad and violent mental health problem glamorized for our entertainment. I bought Ms. Holman's book with the expectation it might somehow reconnect me with these strange times and provide perspective. Read from this angle, unfortunately, the book is a disappointment, because it's essentially a personal memoir, with very little thematic content. This disappointment stemmed from my own misunderstanding of the author's purpose, rather than any flaw in the book itself, since - aside from the title - there's really no pretense here of anything more than a personal memoir. And on that level the book, while not a great one, is not a bad one either. Ms. Holman is the daughter of what appeared to be a normal enough middle-class family until one day, when she was eight, her mother announced to her - privately - that that they had been inducted into a secret army and ordered to set up a field hospital for refugee children who would be fleeing from the coming war. The mother really did receive these orders too, but they were coming from voices in her head, not from the CIA, and they manifested nothing more or less than an early stage of schizophrenia. She bundled up young Virginia and her baby sister, abandoned the father, and drove off to live in the family's summer cottage, essentially a shack from the sound of it , located outside a small beach town on the Virginia coast. This opening seemed to portend a nightmarish Patty-Hearst-like story of abusive craziness, but oddly that never quite materialized. It seems they had relatives nearby, with other children, and Virginia was enrolled in a local school. Things seemed half-way normal much of the time, despite the dysfunctional environment at home. We actually don't hear much more about the mother's "secret war", or even all that much about the mother herself until the end. Most of the book consists of short, impressionistic vignettes of Virginia hanging out with her cousins and trying, with some success, to make friends at school. The father re-appears at one point, announcing he's moving into the shack with them. He loves his daughters and is unwilling to abandon the mother, even though there's nothing he can do to arrest the progress of her disease. A strong, decent man, and the sad hero of this story, he gets a real-estate job in a local bank and manages to earn a living for everybody. He protects the girls while doing what he can to help the mother, even though she refuses medical treatment. Her disease gets worse, and when she does start becoming abusive, the father moves the girls out of the shack, but still returns daily to care for the mother. Once day she cuts all the wiring in the house in order to remove the CIA wiretaps, and this dangerous act finally gets the attention of the local authorities, who give the father the authority he had been seeking to hospitalize her. Ms. Holman eventually goes on the college, marries and has a child of her own. And that's about it. She's haunted by her past and by fears that the disease could be genetic, but she seems to be living happily enough. This is a story that could have happened anytime to the family a schizophrenic parent, and there's really not much in the book about the "decade gone mad", a misleading subtitle probably inserted by her editors. Ms. Holman is a talented writer, and she has an interesting story, both sad and uplifting. People who take up the book for what it is may find it enlightening. However, for me it drifted a little aimlessly, and I can't give it much more than a qualified recommendation.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Find
Review: I stumbled across this book by accident in the library - what a wonderful find! Extremely well written, this book deals with the unpleasantness of a family coping with schizophrenia in an uplifting manner.
Rating:
Summary: Thank You Virginia Holman
Review: I would like to thank Virginia Holman for writing this book. Being the offspring of a mother diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, I was also brought up with maternal delusional thought processses and paternal helplessness. I know what a difficult story this is to narrate. Virginia Holman could not have done a better job.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning, beautifully written
Review: I'm stunned by the impact this book had on me. Virginia Holman's beautifully written memoir is remarkable and gripping. The author's story traces the development of schizophrenia in her mother when the author was just a girl. I was fascinated and horrified how her mother's delusions began to play into the girl's own childhood fantasies. In one terrifying scene, you wonder whether the child herself has also slipped over the edge of reality. As she grows older, she has to confront the awful impact of her mother's disease on the family. While it is painful to witness the trials this family had to endure, there is also a warmth and love that bonds the family together. Ms. Holman's honest telling of her story is a tribute to her own strength and the strength of her family. This memoir is a valuable contribution to those who wish to understand the impact of mental disease on the family and should serve as a touchstone for those who have family members afflicted with mental illness.
Rating:
Summary: An Extraordinary Portrayal of Mental Illness
Review: In 1974, Virginia Holman was kidnapped. RESCUING PATTY HEARST is her ransom note. The kidnapping was "custodial", which usually conjures up images of battery or abuse, or a divorce gone horribly wrong. The perpetrator here was not Holman's father or mother; instead, it was a disease. Holman's mother began experiencing delusions related to an undiagnosed case of schizophrenia. She came to believe that she was a soldier in a secret war and had to set up the family's vacation cottage on the Virginia coast as a field hospital to care for hordes of orphan children. But there were only two children in the small cottage --- Virginia and her baby sister --- and they were not being cared for. Holman tells the story of her childhood experiences on two parallel tracks; each chapter has a date heading that explains whether a younger "Gingie" Holman, or her older, wiser contemporary counterpart is telling the story. We see what happens to Gingie, what she felt about it at the time, and how it affects her now. The author constantly evaluates and reevaluates her mother's actions and her own through the prism of time and experience, rotating back and forth in time to better understand what happened and why. The book's subtitle is "Memories From A Decade Gone Mad"; its first line is "Nineteen seventy-four was a bad time to go crazy." Holman does not blame the excesses of the 1970's for her mother's illness, but makes the point that society was so topsy-turvy at that time that her mother's schizophrenia-induced actions seemed more normal than they otherwise might have. Holman's role model at that young age was Patricia Hearst, kidnapped heiress turned domestic terrorist. She is invoked as a symbol of the times, showing how stunning reversals in character and action can take place. RESCUING PATTY HEARST is a beautifully realized portrait of a seventies childhood set against the backdrop of a devastating illness. Holman is blessed with both a powerful memory bank and astonishing skills at reviving the spirit of a lost civilization from the misty past. Some of this is unavoidably sentimental, but the areas of the book dealing with her mother's mental illness are starkly unsentimental. Holman's intimate knowledge of the disease is tinged with both sympathy and anger, leading to an honest, non-sensationalized portrayal of the reality of mental illness. Her memoir covers not only her mother's strange and powerful delusions, but also the day-to-day struggle that accompanies mental illness. Early on, Holman discusses an early delusion of her mother's that results in a stare of disgust from a harried salesman --- "a look," Holman writes, "that would become increasingly familiar in the years to come." If Virginia Holman's mother had never experienced mental illness, there still would have been the makings of a memoir here; her portrayal of a childhood and a time is masterfully written and affecting. The presence of mental illness lends the book a wrenching quality, bringing home the reality of mental disability and the effects that it has on families and lives. Holman succeeds in describing her childhood; she triumphs in describing her mother, her illness and her plight. RESCUING PATTY HEARST is an extraordinary work, putting to shame more conventional or sentimental portrayals of mental illness. --- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds
Rating:
Summary: Where was Nurse Ratched?
Review: In 1974, Virginia Holman's Mother Molly was thirty-two when the first signs of florid schizophrenia sprouted in her brain. In terms of the disease, "which usually strikes people in their late teens and early twenties, she was a late bloomer." Virginia (Gingie) was eight, and her sister, Emma, one, when the voices commanded their mother to take the girls and go forth to organize a field hospital for children orphaned in the (imagined) impending Armageddon. In this poignant yet uplifting work of "creative nonfiction," we stand by helplessly as Molly sinks into psychosis, taking the girls along on the voyage. The trip includes signs and icons of the era. I kept asking myself "WHY?" Virginia's father offers a part contemporary reality/part rationalization that Family Law Judges of that era were loathe to give father's custody, no matter how patently unfit the mother. (Thank God this ridiculous gender stereotype is loosening - but it's still lurking, unacknowledged, in some older occupants of the Bench.) But where were the Social Workers? Why didn't the School Nurse, who viewed the black-out of the dilapidated "home," contact authorities to pull the girls out of that Hell in their own best interest? What about the maternal Uncle and Aunt who lived next door and did nothing? Even under the standard of "Danger to Herself or Others," how were the obvious dangers to these two girls in Molly's "care" allowed to fester under radar? Nonetheless, Virginia survived the Bedlam, and gives bureaucrats a cautionary guide for What Not To Do and a tale of triumph over adversity to the powerless pawns. Reviewed by TundraVision
Rating:
Summary: Where was Nurse Ratched?
Review: In 1974, Virginia Holman's Mother Molly was thirty-two when the first signs of florid schizophrenia sprouted in her brain. In terms of the disease, 'which usually strikes people in their late teens and early twenties, she was a late bloomer.' Virginia (Gingie) was eight, and her sister, Emma, one, when the voices commanded their mother to take the girls and go forth to organize a field hospital for children orphaned in the (imagined) impending Armageddon. In this poignant yet uplifting work of 'creative nonfiction,' we stand by helplessly as Molly sinks into psychosis, taking the girls along on the voyage. The trip includes signs and icons of the era. I kept asking myself 'WHY?' Virginia's father offers a part contemporary reality/part rationalization that Family Law Judges of that era were loathe to give father's custody, no matter how patently unfit the mother. (Thank God this ridiculous gender stereotype is loosening ' but it's still lurking, unacknowledged, in some older occupants of the Bench.) But where were the Social Workers? Why didn't the School Nurse, who viewed the black-out of the dilapidated 'home,' contact authorities to pull the girls out of that Hell in their own best interest? What about the maternal Uncle and Aunt who lived next door and did nothing? Even under the standard of 'Danger to Herself or Others,' how were the obvious dangers to these two girls in Molly's 'care' allowed to fester under radar? Nonetheless, Virginia survived the Bedlam, and gives bureaucrats a cautionary guide for What Not To Do and a tale of triumph over adversity to the powerless pawns. Reviewed by TundraVision
Rating:
Summary: Stunning debut
Review: In the early 70s, Virginia Holman's mother kidnapped her to a shack on the Chesapeake Bay, painted the windows black, and recruited her to be a soldier in her hallucinated war to save the children. At times tender, often heartwrenching, and with lyric language, Holman's memoir uncovers the painful, secret lives of people who survive schizophrenia in the family. It is an extrarodinary story, told with astonishing honesty and beauty, and finally a sense of hope strong as forged steel. Do not miss reading this book. It is stunning.
Rating:
Summary: Schizophrenic mother
Review: It's a wonderful book just as a piece of literature. It's also a great contribution to understanding what families go through with this illness. I hope Thomas Sasz ("The Myth of Mental Illness") gets to read it.
Schizophrenia usually begins in the late teens in men, but in the twenties in women, so that we often encounter schizophrenic mothers, but seldom schizophrenic fathers. Some things have improved since the 1970's. The medications we have now are not half as likely to cause drooling and stiffness and shaking. Problems getting patients hospitalized persist. The best resource in the predicament Holman describes where help was refused because of lack of evidence of dangerousness is probably your local branch of the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI)
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